The Progress of Man from Advanced Commentary to Sophomoric Opinion

December 23, 2016

America's Belief Problem, Part 1

One of the things that I think have changed in the last 20 years is how we (I, anyway) define even the basic questions. What used to be a tug-of-war between liberal and conservative has become more of a struggle between smarter solutions and less-smart statements of belief.

I wrote to Senator Cornyn recently about what they're calling a "First Amendment Protection Act", which would give Christians the right to discriminate against LGBT people - essentially a reversal of recent progress in that area. What I got in response was a simple (although three paragraphs long) statement of how the senator "believes" this and "believes" that.

It's not just Senator Cornyn, either. I've been writing lately that America has a belief problem, and this is an example of that.

None of this is about what you believe. None of it. Nobody really cares what you believe. You just can't use it to hurt others. When I was in the sixth grade, I was taught that I'm perfectly within my rights to shadowbox. If you don't know, this is what boxers are doing just before a fight, when they punch at the air in front of them as though there was someone there, either in practice for throwing real punches or just to get the blood flowing and get their arms and hands limbered up. As kids, we'd do it because we thought it looked cool. I actually never did it, but that wasn't important to the lesson.

Anyway, we were taught that we had an unwritten right to shadowbox all we wanted, but that right specifically stopped at the moment when it became a menace to someone else. What that means is, you can throw punches all day long, but your right to throw punches stops at actually punching someone. My right stops at someone else's nose.

Today, we have a country that's overrun with people who think that their beliefs are somehow sacrosanct, to the extent that they're allowed to hurt whoever they want with them. But your beliefs are like those punches. Believe whatever fucked-up nonsense you will, but stop using those beliefs as an excuse to hurt others. If these people are successful in taking away marriage equality based on sexual orientation, they will have used their religious belief to cause irreparable harm to a generation of LGBT people.

Let's hope the number of shadowboxers in Congress who are interested in smart solutions outweighs those who are just looking for opportunities to justify their harmful haymakers with statements of belief.